Media Discourses on the Bengal Bangladesh Border Paula Banerjee
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Media Discourses on the Bengal Bangladesh Border Paula Banerjee 2020 Media Discourses on the Bengal Bangladesh Border ∗ Paula Banerjee Introduction 1 On 7 January 2011, a young girl’s body was found swinging from the barbed wire fences in the Chaudhurihat check point in Dinhata, Coochbehar district of West Bengal. Felani was only a15-year- old, and she was allegedly killed while crossing the barbed wire to return to Bangladesh, soon to be married off.The picture of Felani’s lifeless body hanging upside down went viral in the cyberspace. This horrific event propelled Indian and Bangladeshi human rights activists into action. They vociferously took up the cause and launched a campaign. Odhikar, a human rights organisation based in Bangladesh reported: According to Nurul Islam, an eye-witness to this killing, he and Felani were crossing into Bangladesh, by climbing over a barbed-wire fence using bamboo ladders, through the vacant space between number 3 and 4 S pillars, which are adjacent to the 947 main pillar of the KitaberKuthi Anantapur border. Tocross the wired fence, they had made a deal with two Indian smugglers, namely Mosharaf Hussein and Buzrat in exchange of 3,000 Indian Rupees. While they were crossing the fence, Felani’s clothes got tangled in the barbed-wire, which frightened her and caused her to scream in panic. In quick response to her scream, the BSF onpatrol opened fire at them. Felani was shot and killed, but her father managed to escape. The body of the deceased teenager hung on the fence till 11 am that morning; subsequently, 5 hours later the BSF brought down Felani’s body and took it away. 2 Both the national and international news media covered the incident for months and then years. The national media was a little behind the international media but once it took it up it kept running with the “story.” Felani’s death was so sensational that after two years when a court case began against the BSF jawan who allegedly shot Felani the national dailies covered it with a lot of interest. In 2013 a journalist wrote in the Indian Express: Did Felani die soon after she was shot? Or did the 15-year-old scream for hours for help, maybe for water, strung up on the border fence between Bangladesh and India? These are questions her father Nurul Islam hopes a BSF court of inquiry that began this week will answer. Islam crossed the border on August 17 to depose before the court of inquiry.3 ∗ Paula Banerjee is a Professor in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Calcutta, Kolkata Policies and Practices, Issue No. 118, December 2020 The incident led to the signing of an agreement between India and Bangladesh, where the two border forces agreed not to use lethal weapons while guarding the border. That the national dailies have retained interest in the issue is proven by the fact that every year these newspapers carry some stories on this young girl’s death while the court cases continue. Even in 2020 when the Supreme Court agreed to take up the petition made by Felani”s family there were features published on the tragedy. In one such feature the journalist concerned linked it with a trail of violent reprisals by BSF: Torture, indiscriminate killings and abductions are among the many allegations against the BSF. Several survivors and eyewitnesses of attacks allege that the BSF engaged in indiscriminate shooting without warning. No one has been persecuted despite the evidence, say the human rights activists working on these cases. 4 The Indian Human Rights Commission however made it clear that shooting unarmed civilians is not an acceptable mode of behaviour by the BSF. Amongst all these events something interesting emerged and that is the local media from the borders was fairly silent over the issue. 5This paper is meant to be a study on this dichotomy. It is meant to be a study on the Indo-Bangladesh border from the perspectives of English and Bengali language newspapers that claim to have a national readership and local newspapers from the border districts and try to compare and portray how the border is represented and constructed by different discourse communities. What are the questions that both fascinate people and yet make this border a vexed region? In fact, a cardinal question that is addressed here is the role of local media in constructing the border. The border is not just a material space, but also a discursive challenge and an emotive issue. My purpose is to find out what makes this border an almost mythical and sacred space where the state justifies and legitimises its presence by upholding national security and yet the border becomes increasingly an insecure space. It remains an enigma to most people. Whereas to the border people it is a space that demystifies the nation. They look at the nation from the prism of the border. What concerns them is not merely the security of the nation but their own insecurities at times because of the nation and at other times notwithstanding the nation. Let us look at the discourses culled from a few of the leading national newspapers. Their news about the Indo-Bangladesh border takes two prominent but different lines. The newspapers either harp on the quantum of people coming into or infiltrating Indian borders or on the nefarious role played by the BSF, BGB and border criminals. The border people are discussed only incidentally. Even well-intentioned reports are premised on these questions of illegality. One such example is a story that appeared in India Today on 14 January 2011. In this story the author describes the situation thus: Several immigrants...have, over time, become naturalised citizens of India. They have ration cards, educational certificates, voter identity cards and even passports. Touts on both sides of the border have been helping immigrants for decades now. ‘Earlier, immigrants had to pay Rs. 1000 to Rs. 2000 per person for each document. We now charge anywhere between Rs. 5000 to Rs. 10000 per document per person says one tout. 6 If one looks at newspapers that come out from the border areas the coverage is of a different kind. These papers can hardly be called dailies. Typically, they begin abruptly as a response to certain events, run for a certain time and stop abruptly. The editors may or may not support a political party or line but usually the news is about the everyday lives of the people in the area. Even 2 when they carry news of national/international importance there is usually a local twist. In one such story the writer comments: Even though the barbed wires have managed to divide the two countries they have not been able to divide the hearts of the people of the two countries. The love that people have for each other cannot be stopped by the fence. The two people not only share a language but also their hearts so why this fence? This question is raised by Afsar Sheikh, from Rasikpur village in Nadia, when he comes to visit his grand-daughter Marufa. Marufa broke down in tears when she first saw her grandfather. She wanted so much to touch him, but the fence did not let that happen. 7 But not all local news reporters are so kind towards people across the border. From a close reading of these newspapers, I want to reflect on what the questions are that interest different population groups or discourse communities and what makes borders such a select space. The Frame It is a consensus idea perhaps, but merits restating here that media is the institution to which people turn to for vital information affecting their lives. Communication researchers often testify to the fact that the media does not only provide information but shapes discourses as well. This suggests that the media has an important bearing on shaping what the major issues of the day might be. The public expects the media to provide unbiased and non-statist information but, in this donor driven world, much of the bourgeois media represents special interest groups and often act as the cheering squad for these groups such as Republic TV for BJP. That necessitates alternatives where a different viewpoint that does not reflect the national power base can be accommodated. The field of alternative media is still fairly under researched. In the current times speaking of alternative media inevitably means technological diversity and not spatial diversity. One of the most user-friendly definition of alternative media comes from Mitzi Waltz that defines alternative media as media that constitutes an alternative to, or positions itself in opposition to, widely available and consumed mass media products. 8 Christopher Atton on the other hand has created a typology of alternative media that includes radical content, different aesthetics, different distribution sites and transformed communication process. 9 Much of this typology of alternate media is based on the practice of communication and the frames that are used. 10 By this standard, the local or border newspapers/pamphlets that form a major source for this paper may be considered as using alternate frames and therefore can be considered as alternate media. Now we come one of our central question as to how these discourse communities are constructed and how does that shape the space in which they belong. Do individuals come together voluntarily and represent themselves? As we have mentioned before the media helps to shape discourses by championing or repressing certain ideas. Discourses therefore construct identities based on not just an acceptable knowledge corpus but also associated interests.